Once Upon a Wand
by HeadmistressTink
Summary: This is a Disney/Hogwarts crossover story. It has nothing to do with Harry Potter canon or characters - just Disney characters as students at Hogwarts. Pretty much K for now, but rated T just to be safe.
1. Rapunzel: Prologue

**Prologue**

There were millions and millions of babies born in the year 2000. Five of those babies were special. Rapunzel Corona was one of those five.

Maleficent Carabosse knew this. On the evening of Rapunzel's birth, Maleficent sat in the sunroom of her stately mansion, with a woman named Gothel Malum across the table. Both the women sipped their tea, looking out the tall windows at the setting sun.

"So you're _sure_ the child has the power?" Maleficent asked, for about the hundredth time that evening.

"I told you," Gothel responded, with a touch of impatience, "When I fired the curse at her mother, a light glowed from her pregnant belly. There's no way it was anything _but_ the power."

Maleficent set her teacup down and touched the tips of her fingers together, staring Gothel down. "You know how I hate to take innocent children, Gothel. I want you to be absolutely positive about this."

"I am. It's just…"

"_What?_" Maleficent's eyes narrowed at this sign of insecurity.

"Well, I've never seen a power quite like this, my lady. Normally the children don't show signs before they are born. But this girl—this unborn atrocity—definitely had something. And it wasn't like any power I've ever seen before. It was just a bright, glowing light. Unpenetrable. No curse could break it."

"It seems, then, that we must make sure she does not learn to control it. Kidnap her, and make sure she never sees Hogwarts. Keep her hidden from the world until you figure out what this power is—what makes it so different from the others. And never—_never_—let Tink Urbell find out."

Gothel bowed her head as the sun sank below the horizon. "Yes, my lady."


	2. Rapunzel: Chapter 1

**Chapter 1: The Wall**

"Flower, gleam and glow… let your power shine… save what has been lost… bring back what once was mine…"

Ten-year-old Rapunzel sang this under her breath as she crept around the wall. She was almost there. In the faint light emanating from her golden hair, she could see the back door. Almost… almost… almost there…

"Rapunzel!"

The young girl stopped in her tracks. Her voice went silent, and her hair went out. Her mother flicked the lightswitch on.

"Were you trying to go outside again, Rapunzel? Because you know how I feel about outside. And in the middle of the night! It's a wonder you weren't killed!"

Rapunzel then found herself crushed in a tight embrace, and she mumbled into her mother's midsection, "I barely even made it down the stairs."

"And now you're going to make it back up the stairs and into bed!"

In all of Rapunzel's years trying to leave the house, she had been unsuccessful every time. It didn't matter whether she snuck out through the back door or the front door, through the window or through the attic, during the day or in the middle of the night - her mother always stopped her.

But she kept trying.

She would make a better plan tomorrow, she thought as she trudged up the stairs. She would go while her mother was at work during the day. Of course, the twenty-foot wall surrounding her entire property made leaving a bit of a challenge. For whatever reason, the wall seemed to have a personal vendetta against Rapunzel. Every morning, she watched her mother go through a gate. But then, no matter how fast Rapunzel rushed outside, the gate would mysteriously disappear by the time she got there.

Tomorrow would be different. It just had to be. It was her eleventh birthday.

Rapunzel's eleventh birthday was a special day that she'd been looking forward to for years. She had been born on June 11, 2000, so she was turning eleven, on the eleventh, in 2011. That had to be a sign that something special was going to happen.

It just very, truly _had to be_. Rapunzel was going crazy, locked in the house like this. She hadn't once left in almost eleven years. The wall that kept her in was too high to climb, and the only way out would disappear whenever Rapunzel approached it. Almost like magic.

She shook her head at the thought. Her mother had told her a million times, there was no such thing as magic. Her hair wasn't magic; it was a disease - a grotesque genetic mutation that made her hair glow when she sung. And the gate in the wall was hidden to protect Rapunzel from all the people who wouldn't understand. At least, that was what her mother claimed. Rapunzel thought there had to be another explanation. Magic seemed far-fetched, sure, but it was better than the alternative - that Rapunzel was a dangerous freak.

That was her very last thought as she settled down for her very last ten-year-old sleep.

As always, Rapunzel woke up with the sun. Usually she liked to linger in bed, looking out the window and watching the animals around her wake up. But today she had a plan.

She dressed quickly and scampered down the stairs. Her mother was in the kitchen, just getting ready to leave through the back door. Rapunzel stopped at the bottom of the stairs and hid herself behind the wall. If she was going to try and follow her mom, she couldn't be seen. Gothel wandered around the kitchen, doing this and that to prepare for her day, and all the while Rapunzel's heart beat faster. She wanted her mother to _leave_ already. She wanted to do this.

After what seemed like a year, Gothel finally headed toward the back door. The moment she walked out, Rapunzel darted to the living room window. She climbed out and rolled onto the grass below. Pulling herself up, she crouched behind a bush. Her mother was almost to the gate. Rapunzel ran at top speed toward Gothel's back, wondering how she would make it without letting her mother see. As Gothel approached the gate, Rapunzel hid behind a tree about ten feet away. She figured she would only have a couple of seconds to catch the gate before it closed. Once it closed, she knew it would disappear.

Her mother opened the gate.

She walked through it.

The gate began to close.

Rapunzel ran.

For a split second, her heart leaped into her throat. She was about to make it! The gate was just about to slam shut when Rapunzel reached out to hold it open, and—

BAM!

The gate slammed onto Rapunzel's finger. She bit her lip to keep from crying out. She knew if she made any noise, her mother would come rushing back. But her finger was stuck. The gate was closed.

Just as she thought this couldn't get any worse, the gate began to change. Its particles seemed to vibrate, and the golden rods got wider and darker, until it was indistinguishable from the wall.

Rapunzel's finger was stuck in the wall. And it hurt. A lot.

She began to cry silent tears. What was she going to do now? She would be spending her eleventh birthday stuck to a wall until her mom got home, at which point she would be in more trouble than she'd ever been in before. Some special day.

For almost forty-five minutes, she tried to pull her finger out of the wall. After nothing worked (and her finger had become quite sore) she leaned up against the wall and resigned herself to being put on a literal leash when her mother got home. Gothel was going to be furious. She would never let Rapunzel out of her sight after this. Today was supposed to mark the beginning of Rapunzel's freedom, but really, it was marking the end of—

The wall began to vibrate again. _Oh crap_, Rapunzel thought. Her mother must have seen what had happened somehow. Her heart beat faster. This was it. It was happening. The wall once more became a gate, and the gate opened, freeing Rapunzel's finger but trapping the rest of her. For life.

Before Gothel could say anything, Rapunzel sunk to her knees and closed her eyes. "I'm so, so, _so_ sorry, Mother. I promise, it will never happen again."

"What are you talking about, Blondie?" came a voice from above. A voice that was not Gothel's.

Rapunzel looked up. It was not her mother who stood before her, but a boy. He was tall, with a thin face and dark, floppy hair. It was hard for Rapunzel to tell, having never met an actual boy before, but he looked like he could be about her age.

"Who are you?" she asked, getting to her feet. "And how did you get in here?"

"I, uh… opened the gate?" He used his thumb to point over his shoulder. The gate was still there. Normally it would have disappeared by now.

Rapunzel narrowed her eyes. "Why are you here?"

"I found this letter outside your gate and assumed it was yours." He held out a thick parchment envelope. "Are you Rapunzel Corona?"

"Rapunzel Malum, actually." She took the letter from him anyway. The envelope did have her address on it—right down to _The Room Upstairs_. Who else could it be for? She eagerly broke the seal on the envelope and pulled out the first page.

* * *

HOGWARTS SCHOOL _of_ WITCHCRAFT _and_ WIZARDY

Headmistress: Tink Urbell

Dear Ms. Corona,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl no later than 31 July.

Yours Sincerely,

Anita Radcliffe

Deputy Headmistress

* * *

All Rapunzel could do was stare at the letter in shock. She had been accepted to a school of witchcraft and wizardry? There was no way. This had to be a joke. "Did you make this letter?" she defiantly asked the boy.

"Nope. I just found it outside your gate."

"But this—this can't be! I'm not a… witch."

"Come on, Blondie. Haven't you ever noticed anything different about yourself? Any signs of something out of the ordinary?"

"My name," she snarled, "is Rapunzel."

"Gesundhite."

"And no, I haven't. I'm completely ordinary." She didn't think it was necessary to tell this complete stranger about her glowing hair.

"Well, obviously not, if you got this letter."

"How would you know anything about it, anyway?" Rapunzel crossed her arms over her chest. Who was this boy to come in here and act like he knew a single thing about her life? The letter didn't even have her real name on it!

The boy fished in his back pocket and pulled out a folded-up piece of parchment. "I got a letter, too. A couple months ago." He unfolded it, and Rapunzel saw that the creases had softened. It was clear he had opened and read it many times.

"And you just believed you had magical powers? Just like that?"

"It's easy to believe something that tells you you're special," he said quietly. "And, besides, I've known I was different for a while. Things kept happening to me… I live in the orphanage up the street, and I could just take things from the other kids, without them noticing. I played tricks on them. Nothing too mean, of course, but it was always so _easy_. I never got caught. And whenever they tried to get back at me, it never worked. I thought I was unstoppable." He chuckled a bit. "Turns out I was just a wizard."

Rapunzel didn't say anything. She knew she was magical. She had to be. It all made sense now. She didn't have a disease! Her mother had just told her that because—

Why had her mother told her that? Why would she tell her own daughter a lie that would make her hate herself?

"She's not going to let me go," Rapunzel breathed.

"What's that?" the boy asked.

"My mother. She's never going to let me go. She keeps me locked up in here because—" she stopped herself before she accidentally mentioned her hair. "She won't let me. I've never even left this yard."

"You've never left your house?"

"No."

"And you still don't want to go?"

"No, no! I want to go! I just don't know how to get out of here. I think that gate hates me."

"It's probably enchanted or something," the boy said, nodding his head sagely as though he knew what he was talking about. Rapunzel rolled her eyes.

"Well, either way, that's the only way out. And I can't get through. So I'm not going."

"I'm sure there has to be another way. We'll get you out of here."

"You would help me?"

"Sure, why not? It'll be good to at least know one person at school."

"I would hardly say we know each other. I don't even know your name."

"I'm Eugene Fitzherbert. And I, Blondie, am now officially your hero."

Eugene stayed with Rapunzel the rest of the day. They lounged on the grass and talked about possible ways out. They tried the obvious first—but even when Eugene held the gate open, Rapunzel could not leave. It was like there was an invisible barrier that kept her from passing through. So that complicated things.

Most of the ideas they came up with would never work, but it was fun to get the ridiculous suggestions out. Rapunzel's favorite was blowing up (or otherwise getting rid of) the wall.

She hated the stupid wall, more than she thought it was possible to hate anything. She wanted to see what was out there in the world. There had to be more than just this one little square of land. There were oceans and mountains and fields—and most of all, there was Hogwarts, and the promise of adventure.

Since Eugene had grown up in an orphanage, he knew how Rapunzel felt. At least a little bit. He was trapped in the sparse monotony of his lonely life. He had no one his age to play with. Maybe that was why he was so eager to help Rapunzel escape her prison. Maybe he needed a friend as much as she did.

When the sun was beginning to sink lower in the sky, Rapunzel sat up straight. "You should go," she said, "before my mother comes home. If she found out about you…"

"Say no more, Blondie. I am out of here."

"Rapunzel," she said with a smile.

He stood up and dusted the grass off his pants. "Right. I'll see you back here tomorrow? Same time?"

"Yep!"

Eugene left, and Rapunzel watched enviously, longing to be able to just walk through the gate and never return. But she couldn't. Well, there was the fact that she physically _couldn't_… but she also wasn't sure she could leave her mother. Maybe her mom really did think Rapunzel had a deadly disease, and she was really keeping her quarantined just to be safe. Maybe she didn't even know magic existed.

But then, if she didn't know about magic, how could she have put the spell on the wall?

Rapunzel fell back into the grass and put her hands over her face. She didn't know what to think. She'd woken up hoping today would be special, but she had no idea the last eight hours would completely turn her life around.

The wall began to shift again, and the gate reappeared. This time it actually was Gothel who came inside. Rapunzel quickly shoved the letter under a bush.

"Happy birthday, my flower!" the woman crooned. "What did you do today?"

Rapunzel stood up, trying not to look too guilty. "Um, nothing. Just sat out here and looked at the clouds."

"Sounds fun, darling." Gothel tucked a strand of hair behind Rapunzel's ear. "Now, let's go inside. I bought parsnips for hazelnut soup!"

As her mother walked away, Rapunzel untucked the lock of hair. Gothel was on very thin ice right now, as far as Rapunzel was concerned.

They sat down for dinner about an hour later, and before Rapunzel even took a bite of her soup, she asked her mom, "Why is the gate only there some of the time?"

Gothel, spoon halfway to her mouth, paused mid-bite. "What's that, sweetheart?"

"When you need to leave the house, there is a gate in the wall. But when I go outside, I never see it. Where does it go?"

If Gothel was angry at Rapunzel, she didn't show it. She just let her face slip into a nonchalant smile, and she laughed at her daughter. "Mommy hides the gate, dear. I don't want anyone to come inside and take my little flower away."

"But _how_ do you hide it?"

"Rapunzel…"

"Do you use magic?"

"Rapunzel!" Gothel slammed her spoon down, and soup spattered all over the table. "I've told you a hundred times before, _there's no such thing as magic!_"

"But then how—?"

_"Rapunzel!"_

Recognizing her mother's tone, Rapunzel bowed her head in defeat.

"Where do you get these ludicrous ideas in your head, Rapunzel? I don't think I raised you to believe in such outlandish things as magic."

"No. I'm sorry, Mother. I'll clean up the soup."

Gothel's face softened, and she smiled at her daughter. "It's all right dear. I just hate to fight—especially on your birthday."

Rapunzel knew that meant the fight was over. But she still wasn't giving up.


End file.
